The most important international tourism source market, responsible for almost 10% of all international trips, is China. Accordingly, it was very encouraging for Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Arlt to see how many new and innovative activities are taking place to welcome and satisfy Chinese outbound travellers during the online event to celebrate the CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Award 2026.
COTRI and its partners, the Tourism Institute based in Belgium and the COTRI partner office in Beijing/China, offered an online event on Thursday, 9th July 2026 to start their new cooperation to support both inbound and outbound tourism to and from China. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Arlt (CEO COTRI), Reza Soltani (President Tourism Institute) and Prof. Yang Jingjing (COTRI China) co-hosted the online show introducing the new structure, which will organise events and conferences to support both inbound and outbound tourism to and from China.
Before the CTW Award 2026 winners were announced, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Arlt gave a short overview about the current situation of inbound, domestic and outbound tourism in China.
By a lucky coincidence, China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a few days ago the Tourism Five-year Plan for 2026-2030, aiming at accelerating the construction of China as a “tourism powerhouse” with the number of inbound tourist arrivals in 2030 growing to 190 million, spending more than 150 billion USD. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Arlt quoted in a short presentation Chinese experts pointing out that “When foreign tourists personally experience China’s culture, history and modern achievements, it helps enhance China’s international image and cultural influence.”
For domestic tourism the target for 2030 is no less than mind-boggling: 8.3 billion trips with total domestic tourism spending amounting to 7.7 trillion RMB (1 trillion Euro).
The new Five-Year Plan also includes interesting statements about the new development of tourism in China: The inclusiveness of tourism is to be further developed by adapting to the needs of different tourist groups by launching customized and personalized tourism products and routes.
A stronger focus on the health and wellness, emotional companionship, and interest-based social needs of the elderly is envisaged, translated into developing themed products such as wellness tourism and nostalgia tours.
Not all governments in the world have reached the level of understanding of tourism to see that for example “emotional companionship” is a key product of tourism, not the least because of the growing number of older persons in China, many of whom have no support from the single child they were allowed to raise in the years they were starting a family, starting in the 1980s.
China is already No. 1 outbound tourism market and No. 1 domestic tourism market, the aim is to become also No. 1 inbound tourism market in the world. Inbound tourism is for China not only an economic factor (plan for 2030 about 15% of total Chinese tourism revenue), but a soft power instrument – Marketing has to take this into consideration. Domestic tourism quality is improving; outbound tourism is no longer automatically more prestigious and preferred.
For international tourism service providers, the need to offer customised high-quality products for Chinese outbound market to create interest to discover new destinations or to produce reasons for return visits is apparent as is the need to connect inbound and outbound activities and to demonstrate support of tourism in both directions.
Following the presentation, Mr. Beka Jakeli, Director of External Relations at the World Tourism Organization, found friendly words about the presentation, saying that “you provided, and excellent qualitative data, excellent qualitative data, and these data are critically important and should be critically important for every destination. I will then share with relevant colleagues, with our market intelligence team and the team from Asia and the Pacific, because it will enrich our knowledge base and is very important”.
Readers interested to receive the full presentation can contact info@meaningfultourismcentre.org and will be provided free of charge with a copy of the Powerpoint presentation.
However, the main part of the event was the presentation of the winners of the CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Award 2026. Almost all winners were present and several of them shared their insights and projects with the audience. The CTW Award 2026 winners showed already how to respond to the new demand from China and many related their activities directly to the Meaningful Tourism approach, from new platforms for short-rental accommodation on Mauritius to gastronomy-based customised tours in France and from IT solutions helping cultural SMEs and small specialised shops around the world to use Chinese social media in a simple and cost-efficient way.
The award, which is organised by COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute since 2004, was given in five categories: Product Innovation, Internet/Media, Service Quality, Marketing and Overall Performance.
In 2026, the winners came from around the world, with the Gold Award winners located in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In total the 15 CTW Awards were given to five winners from Asia, four from Europe, three from Africa, two from the Americas and one from Oceania.
The online CTW Award presentation took two hours, however, almost all participants stayed for the whole time and praised the level and quality of the information provided by COTRI and by the Award winners themselves. If you missed it, you can find the video on
https://institutetourism.com/chinese-tourist-award-2026/
If you are interested in the full list of winners, please click the links below: